Sixty-nine years ago today, the military forces of Japan conducted a surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was proposed by Japanese Adm. Yamamoto Isoroku as a means of furthering Japanese aims in Southeast Asia. Yamamoto had spent some years in the United States, studying English at Harvard University and serving as a naval attaché in Washington, D.C., and he had developed certain views that colored his prediction of how the United States would respond to such an attack. He correctly perceived that American industrial might would prove to be Japan’s undoing in a long war. However, his incorrect assumptions about the caliber of American naval officers and American resolve in the wake of such an attack made exactly that kind of war a virtual certainty. Under the command of Vice Adm. Nagumo Chūichi, a Japanese fleet composed of a half-dozen aircraft carriers, two battleships, and assorted support craft closed to within 300 miles of Hawaii. As a prelude to the aerial assault, five Japanese midget submarines attempted to infiltrate the harbor, and newly discovered evidence indicates that one of them may have completed its mission and fired on Battleship Row. The other four, however, were ultimately destroyed or captured, and one, sunk by the USS Ward outside the harbor at approximately 6:45 AM, threatened to alert the U.S. forces to the impending attack. A warning from the Ward‘s captain was never received by the remainder of the fleet, and the attack commenced as planned. As Britannica describes:

The first Japanese dive bomber appeared over Pearl Harbor at 7:55 am (local time). It was part of a first wave of nearly 200 aircraft, including torpedo planes, bombers, and fighters. The reconnaissance at Pearl Harbor had been lax; a U.S. Army private who noticed this large flight of planes on his radar screen was told to ignore them, since a flight of B-17s from the United States was expected at that time. The anchored ships in the harbour made perfect targets for the Japanese bombers, and since it was Sunday morning (a time chosen by the Japanese for maximum surprise) they were not fully manned. Similarly, the U.S. military aircraft were lined up on the airfields of the Naval Air Station on Ford Island and adjoining Wheeler and Hickam Fields to guard against sabotage, and many were destroyed on the ground by Japanese strafing. Most of the damage to the battleships was inflicted in the first 30 minutes of the assault. The Arizona was completely destroyed and the Oklahoma capsized. The California, Nevada, and West Virginia sank in shallow water. Three other battleships, three cruisers, three destroyers, and other vessels were also damaged. More than 180 aircraft were destroyed. U.S. military casualties totaled more than 3,400, including more than 2,300 killed. The Japanese lost from 29 to 60 planes, five midget submarines, perhaps one or two fleet submarines, and fewer than 100 men.

This Britannica video shows archived footage of the attack and its aftermath, and the destruction of the capital ships docked at Battleship Row was a major loss to the U.S. Pacific Fleet, but it was not a catastrophic one. The U.S. carrier fleet was already under sail at the time of the attack, and Pearl Harbor’s crucial repair and drydock facilities, as well as its oil storage reserves, were fundamentally intact. Yamamoto, who was himself one of the world’s foremost proponents of carrier-based air power, recognized that the failure to destroy the American carriers would return to haunt him. Indeed, during the planning stages of the attack, Yamamoto had stated that he would have free reign in the Pacific for six months after the attack, but “after that, I have no expectation of success.” That prediction was ultimately proved correct at the Battle of Midway (June 1942), which saw the destruction of the bulk of the Japanese carrier fleet and many of its experienced pilots.